Even after the blast, the strip-cut basin of the quarry held the sound of settling stone and scorched metal. Heat shimmered off the broken rails that had once run ore carts up from the mine’s mouth, now sealed behind a mound of collapsed rock and warped steel. The wind dragged smoke across the pit floor in lazy streaks, carrying the stink of coolant, carbonized magic, and burnt electronics.

  Xander stood near Jo and Zoey at the mouth of the shaft watching Darvos' men approach. The air still shimmered with residual pressure, and scorched divots marked where debris had rained down during the cave-in. His tattered coat hung open at the seam, the armor underneath stiff with blood. It wouldn’t pass muster in a gear check, but it had held up longer than the cultists buried below.

  Dragged between the two men, the prisoner they had found looked more like a sack of broken meat than a cultist. Given the torture the cult had tried to inflict on Cabbot, he was finding it difficult to empathise with the man's plight.

  Xander was able to get a better look at the cultist as the trio approached. His robes were half-gone, torn by the blast and flayed open along one side where a length of shrapnel had caught him low in the gut. One arm was clearly broken as Xander could see the bone sticking out of the wound. He wasn’t screaming, most likely having passed out from shock and blood loss. His head lolled on his neck as they casually dropped him at Darvos' feet like a duffel bag full of broken bones.

  Seems the men of Fort Octave weren't feeling very generous to the cultists at the moment.

  Ford arrived next, staff in one hand, eyes on the wounds. "He’s alive?"

  "Barely," one soldier said. "Found him jammed under one of the collapsed mine equipment. I guess he fell there during the initial fray, and no one noticed him."

  "Lucky," Xander said.

  "No," Darvos said. "Unlucky. For him."

  The cultist coughed. His eyelids fluttered, and for a second Xander thought he might be gone already. But then the eyes snapped open.

  Pale irises. Yellowed whites. Pupils blown wide and unfocused.

  Definitely drugged. The question was whether it was pain management or just whatever cocktail the cult handed out to keep their faithful buzzed on prophecy and poor decisions. Hard to tell the difference when a guy looked half-dead but still had enough muscle tone to sneer.

  "You’re all doomed," the man croaked. His voice was a gurgle of spit and blood. "We will control... the veins of the world."

  Xander raised a hand. "Hold up."

  He leaned forward, expression flat, voice dry. "Really? You’re gonna lead with that?"

  The cultist’s breathing rasped. His lips twitched.

  Xander shook his head. "You're going with you are all doooooomed. DoOoOoOmed. You guys rehearse that in secret meetings, or does it just come with the robes?"

  Jo snorted from nearby. Ford gave him a look that suggested this wasn’t the time, but the cultist was already fading, eyes fogging like cracked glass.

  Ford crouched to apply healing magic, hand already starting to glow.

  The cultist twitched and then he bit down.

  Xander saw the jaw tighten, the throat seize, the convulsion ripple through his chest like a shudder and then the breath just stopped.

  Ford froze. "Shit."

  The glow faded. He grabbed the man’s jaw, pried it open, checked the teeth. "The jackwagon took something. He's gone."

  The body didn’t move again.

  Darvos stood over them, arms crossed. "Second time this week one of these captured cultist bastards swallowed a suicide pill."

  "We've seen it as well," Xander said. "One tried to off themselves when we were recovering the train."

  Technically true. What he didn’t add was that Thalindra had stopped the guy before the poison took hold. They’d gotten something useful out of him, just enough to draw some lines between the attacks. But that kind of intel came with weight. Xander trusted Rex, but Fort Octave wasn’t Starlight though, and Darvos wasn’t on his list of people who needed to see all the cards.

  "They all die rather than talk." Ford sat back on his heels, gaze distant. "We’re dealing with fanatics."

  Darvos nodded slowly, something harder behind his eyes now. "Well, they aren't called a cult for nothing."

  The breeze shifted, tugging smoke sideways. Up the slope, the remaining Fort Octave soldiers gathered in ragged clusters. Some still standing, some sitting on packs or crumpled tarps, weapons sheathed but never far. Kane leaned against a scorched rail post, shield across his knees, watching them with the twitchy alertness of someone who didn’t know how to stand still after surviving.

  Zoey lay back against a rock with one leg splinted and chewed on something that might’ve been dried fruit or a piece of her sleeve. The expression she wore didn’t match the casual sprawl of her posture.

  Darvos exhaled through his nose. "We needed answers. Instead, we get another corpse."

  "I know," Xander said. "But I didn’t see another way through that fight."

  Darvos didn’t look at him right away. "You did what you had to. So did I, but I had twelve men posted for an extraction op, not a siege. When you charged the front, you left us out of position."

  Xander had been waiting for this. Darvos appeared to be the type to yell, but that didn’t make the words land any softer. He had a right to be pissed. Fort Octave had bled for this fight, and Xander had sprinted straight into the meat of it like it was personal.

  Because it was. Just not in a way he was ready to share.

  He wasn’t about to explain why the mine hadn’t felt like a tactical decision, but a line in the dirt. He wasn’t going to tell Darvos that Cabbot had been dragged into this, that something had reached through their bond and twisted it, hijacked it, like a hand trying to crush the spine of what little still mattered.

  Until he understood what that was and why the cultist had done it, Darvos didn’t need to know jack shit.

  "We didn’t have time," Xander replied. "If we’d waited, the spider would’ve gone mobile. Taken the rest of the mine with it or cooked the whole damn slope."

  "You’re sure of that?"

  "No." He looked down at the cultist's corpse. "But I’m sure of what it nearly did."

  "I still would’ve liked a heads-up," the sergeant said.

  "Noted." Xander didn’t apologize. He met Darvos’ eyes. "But I stand by the decision."

  Darvos studied him for a moment longer, then turned and walked toward the triage circle. Hask was stirring now, propped against a boulder with one arm across his chest like it might fall off if he let go. Someone had gotten the worst of the blood off him.

  Ford remained kneeling by the body. He didn’t move. Just stared at the dead man’s face like it might rearrange itself into something useful.

  Xander crouched beside him. "Those words mean anything to you? Veins of the world?"

  Ford shook his head. "Nothing obvious. Could be a metaphor. Could be literal. If it’s a magical term, I’d need to check the Data Forge when we get back to a safe zone."

  "I there might be someone else we can ask," Xander said.

  Ford looked up. "Thalindra?"

  Xander didn’t answer right away. Thalindra. Seven feet of ancient Valdren intellect wrapped in a body built like a cathedral column. Pitch-black skin, silver hair, and a crown of backward-curving horns made her look like something sculpted out of myth, but it was the way she thought that made her dangerous. They’d pulled her from cryostasis beneath the old railroad museum, inside a Simulation control center hidden at the bottom of the dungeon. She came from a time when the Simulation wasn’t myth or theory, but everyday life. Since then, she’d been helping sort through the Data Forge, filling in the blanks with the basic knowledge her era took for granted and theirs had lost completely.

  "Yeah," he said finally. "She might know what to make of it."

  Ford didn’t push. Just nodded, then stood with a faint grunt.

  Behind them, the mine let out another soft groan as the rocks settled into place. A warning, maybe. Or just the world shifting back into place after being torn apart.

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  Jo stepped up beside them, arms crossed, her eyes still scanning the pit like she expected it to twitch again.

  "So," she said. "Anybody want to guess what veins of the world actually means before Ford builds a thesis paper?"

  "Clearly," Zoey called, "it’s a deeply symbolic reference to the majestic underground bloodstream of the planet. Magical arteries. Pulsing conduits of forgotten power." She paused just long enough for dramatic effect. "Or, you know. Dick joke."

  Ford didn’t even look up. "Why do I even try?"

  Kane copied the dramatic gesture made by Zoey as if thinking deeply and then raised a finger and spoke in a mock-highbrow accent. "Okay, but if the world’s got veins, that means we’ve been walking across its ass this whole time, right?"

  Jo gave him a look. "That explains the smell."

  "I hate all of you," Ford said, with a touch of humor.

  Xander stayed quiet, letting the rhythm play out while his thoughts traced backward toward the mine, and the war machine they’d barely stopped. "Whatever it is," he said finally, "it isn’t just metaphor. That spider wasn’t enchanted junk they happened to find"

  Ford pushed to his feet and dusted his palms against his coat. "It could be a command structure. A network of hidden control points. If the Simulation runs through the world like a machine, the ‘veins’ might be its interface nodes. Places where the underlying system can be touched."

  "Like the control room under the museum," Xander added, watching the way that thought settled in everyone’s expressions. "That was functional. Still alive, even after centuries buried. What if there are more of them?"

  "Veins," Ford said again. "A system beneath the world, stitched into the bones of it. Accessed only by those who know where to access it."

  "Great," Zoey muttered. "So we’re not just fighting a cult anymore. We’re fighting wannabe system admins?"

  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here," Jo cautioned, shooting Xander a look.

  Xander caught the glance and returned it, just barely. A small shift in his posture, a flick of the eyes. Enough to say thanks without putting words to it.

  Because, yeah, they were already ahead of themselves. Way ahead.

  He and Jo had found a system key. Not metaphorical. A literal access credential. Hidden inside the admin vault beneath a rail museum, paired with a battered but legible admin manual. It had come with Thalindra.

  The group hadn't told anyone.

  Not because they didn’t trust the others, but because this wasn’t the time. Not when they were standing ankle-deep in cult wreckage with a half-dozen soldiers listening in and nothing but loose rubble between them and whatever else might be crawling down in that mine.

  Jo’s look made sure the conversation didn’t wander where it shouldn’t.

  Xander turned, pitching his voice across the camp. "Darvos!"

  The sergeant was standing near the medical station, where Hask had been propped up on a folded tarp and given something bitter-looking to sip. He didn't call back but rather walked over, jaw tight and posture still keyed like a man not yet done with the day’s fight.

  "You’ve seen gear like that spider before?"

  "Not like that," Darvos said. "But Fort Octave’s recovered pieces. Old. Mostly sealed in hardened crates stored under the old Air Force base. No markings or provenance."

  "Military stashes?"

  "Maybe. But they weren’t forgotten. They were staged for quick deployment. Set aside like they were waiting for something to activate them."

  Xander frowned. "Think someone knew this was coming?"

  Darvos didn’t answer right away. His silence wasn’t a dodge, just measured. Eventually, he gestured back toward the north. "Ask Commander Rex when we get in. He’ll tell you what he thinks you’ve earned."

  Which was a polite way of saying shut the hell up and wait your turn.

  Zoey exhaled and leaned back again. "Good old-fashioned chain of command. Nothing says end of the world like compartmentalized intel and ancient warbots."

  Kane grunted.

  Xander let the banter pass through him as his hand drifted to his belt, checking for the hammerpick’s familiar weight. It was still there, scorched and dented but solid. A brutal thing, not elegant, but honest in its violence. He'd have to repair it when they got back to Starlight. His spear, though, was another story. He'd left it in the cavern during the collapse. His only hope was that the Simulation would count is as broken.

  He closed his eyes briefly and reached inward, letting his attention stretch toward the quiet threads the Simulation used to bind player and gear. There was something faint, like an echo through fog, but it was there.

  He focused on the connection, tightened the thought like a knot.

  [Weapon Ability] Recall enchantment activated!

  With a ripple of light and the crackle of displaced air, the spear reappeared in his hand, haft blackened but intact, the head dulled at the edge but still true. The balance was perfect. It settled like it belonged.

  Ford, watching from nearby, raised an eyebrow. "That’s a neat trick."

  "I want a bow that does that," Zoey said. "Hell, I’ll take one that even texts me back."

  Kane glanced up. "You always been able to do that?"

  "No," Xander said. "It is an ability of this spear only."

  He slid the spear over his shoulder, letting it settle into the same groove his coat always carried. It felt right there, like it had never really been gone.

  Across the ridge, Zoey’s gaze lingered on the weapon, and for a moment, the humor left her face. "Mine didn’t make it."

  Jo turned. "The bow?"

  "Left it behind when I jumped. Had to." Her voice wasn’t bitter, just final. "It’s buried now."

  Darvos stepped forward. "We’ve got spares. Crossbow and a few short spears. You’re welcome to take one until we reach the base."

  Zoey shook her head once. "No. I’ll find another."

  There was no drama or anger in her voice. Just that clipped edge she used when something actually mattered. Xander watched her turn away from the offered crossbow without hesitation. The bow had been hers. That much was clear. It was more than gear, more than habit, and from the way she set her jaw, he figured she would rather rebuild from scratch than lean on something that didn’t feel like hers.

  Around the area, the Fort Octave soldiers had packed what little they’d unrolled. Ration packs, half-spent medical kits, and folded stretchers lay carefully next to the wounded. Kane gave Hask a hand up when the corporal tried to rise on his own and nearly face-planted into the dirt. Zoey was upright now too, testing her balance, one hand braced on Jo’s shoulder as they slowly made their way toward the others. She winced, but didn’t complain.

  Xander hung back for a moment.

  He opened his interface with a blink and a thought. The screen folded into view, crisp edges of light and layered text flickering just outside his normal vision.

  +2 Leadership | Barking at soldiers mid-countersiege counts, even if half of them couldn’t hear you over the sound of combat

  +2 Mace Combat | You treated that hammerpick like a problem-solving device.

  +1 Spear Combat | You lost the spear, so here’s a pity point. Maybe try holding on to it next time.

  +1 Light Armor | You took hits and stayed standing. Mostly vertical counts.

  +1 Analyze | Glancing at ancient tech between giant metal legs was apparently educational. Pervert.

  The list came fast. Combat proficiency, light armor resilience, situational leadership, even the mace line had ticked up. That probably meant the hammerpick’s abuse had been officially noted by the system. Analyze had gone up too, likely from the half-dozen glances he’d stolen at the spider’s internal systems while dodging limbs the size of tree trunks. The message the Simulation had given him for Analyze was unwarranted, he thought.

  Still, most of what he was building came down to survivability, pressure, force. Hit harder, hold longer, shield better. All things that mattered in a straight fight. But straight fights had been rare lately. He needed to invest in options like mobility or support, something with teeth beyond his own.

  The system pinged again.

  Level up! Congratulations, you are now at level twelve. Go forth and defend the realms, mighty hunter. You receive one (1) stat point to allocate as desired.

  Twelve, that was some good news. Finally.

  He assigned the stat point to Strength. More power and the boost to health wouldn’t hurt either. It felt like the right call.

  Banner of Conviction

  Type: Passive Aura

  Effect: Allies within 15 meters gain minor healing over time when they deal damage to enemies currently marked as belonging to the crusade target. Healing intensity scales with the ally’s faith in the ideals of the crusade and the strength of the player’s current crusade bonus.

  Mana Cost: None

  The name hovered briefly before resolving into full script. Banner of Conviction. A passive aura sounded kind of lame, but it triggered a minor heal to any ally within twenty yards who was engaged in combat against his enemies. Any healing is good healing. The strength of the effect scaled with belief. They didn’t even have to know they were fighting for it, just believe that what they were doing mattered.

  Only Jo and Zoey knew what his Crusade quest was. Not the public-facing reasons he'd given for hunting down the Cult, but the actual quest behind it. The real thing. Ford and Kane fought beside him without hesitation, but they didn’t know the full terms.

  Xander frowned at the wording. Crusade bonus? That was new. There wasn’t anything on his character sheet that explained it, and the system wasn’t exactly known for offering helpful footnotes.

  Name: Xander Kell

  Class: Lightbringer Crusader

  Level: 12

  Health: 400/400

  Mana: 140/140

  Stats

  Strength: 11

  Dexterity: 14 (+10)

  Intelligence: 7

  Constitution: 9

  Charisma: 5

  Abilities

  Taunt

  Disarm

  Cat’s Grace

  Cat’s Sight

  Spectral Sight

  Radiant Smite

  Radiant Aegis

  Crusader’s Verdict

  Judgemental Strike

  Light Heal

  Moderate Heal

  Sanctify

  Banner of Conviction (Passive Aura)

  Skills

  Spear Combat: 25

  Mace Combat: 17

  Knife Combat: 1

  Thrown Spear: 1

  First Aid: 1

  Analyze: 9

  Light Armor: 23

  Leadership: 16

  Meditation: 6

  Divine Forge Master: 15

  It was tempting to tell them. At least Ford. The man had spent more time patching the group back together than most people had spent alive post-Reboot. And Kane… well, Kane would probably just want to punch whatever needed punching once he heard the goal. But the truth was, none of it mattered right now. Not practically. Everyone here already agreed the cult needed stopping. No sense complicating that with secret class lore and weird divine fine print until they had real clarity on what the enemy was chasing.

  He dismissed the window and rolled his shoulders once, the muscles along his back flexing against the coat’s ruined lining. For now, the work was enough. The mission still pointed in the right direction. That was all he needed.

  Down by a cluster of mining equipment, Darvos raised his voice just enough to cut across the pit. "We move in fifteen. No dawdling. Gear up and prep for a quick march. I want eyes open and weapons packed for trail carry."

  Xander moved to join the others, pausing long enough to glance back toward the collapsed mine mouth. If the Cult got its hands on a working version of the Spidertank, everyone was going to be in trouble. The one they had just faced had been heavily damaged right from the start of the fight. A full-power version would have been the end of them all.

  Behind him, Ford slowed as he passed. His eyes stayed on the far ridge, where a line of broken scaffolding met open sky.

  Then he stopped.

  "You see that?" he said quietly.

  Xander followed his gaze. For a second, there was nothing but stone and shimmer. Then a burst of movement. A flicker, low to the ground. Something small, fast, and crawling just below the ridgeline before it vanished.

  "I saw it," Xander said. "Could’ve been a random animal. Could’ve been worse."

  Ford nodded slowly. "It’s never the first option."

  "No," Xander agreed. "It’s usually the third one you don't know about until it kicks you in the backside."

  Behind them, the rest of the group had started their last checks. Kane was double-strapping Ford’s gear while Zoey tightened a makeshift brace over her still-tender leg. Jo was already moving, blade re-sheathed, expression hard.

  Xander let his gaze settle on the mine one last time. The more he turned over that phrase, veins of the world, the less it felt like a move made by someone on the board. It felt like something watching from the sidelines, waiting. And this was just the warm-up.

  He turned away and started walking.

  Better to meet these plots on the trail, before they could turn into the world-ending nonsense that came with countdown timers and glowing sky holes. He was getting really tired of those.